Why, you might ask, the need to change? “IE6 has been working fine for me since time immemorial. Why should I bother to change?” Well my friend, let me explain.

IE6 is an old technology. It was first released 9 years ago. Since then, a lot of newer and more modern browsers have come out, like Mozilla Firefox, Opera, even Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8. These newer, modern browsers support newer technologies that allow for more engaging and interactive web experience, which many of them are not supported by IE6. We web developers are very, very keen to integrate these new technologies into the websites that we build so that you, the end user, may experience a more engaging and interactive web experience.

Building a website is not easy. We sometimes lose our sleep time and miss our dinner and lunch just writing those codes that make any website works, codes that you never have to lay your eyes upon. Because there are several different internet browsers out there that command a sizable chunk of the internet browsers market share, we have to write codes that are compatible with each of those popular browsers. Of all these web browsers, IE6 has been time and again the single most problematic web browser. It takes more time to fix the codes to make it IE6-compatible than with all the other browsers combined. It is also the single most frustrating web browser to work with for any web developer. Yes, there’s nothing more that would greatly reduce our burden than the death of IE6.

Our interests aside, some developers are already using more advanced web technology in the websites that they build, totally disregarding the inability of IE6 to support it, including Google. What this means is that you may be missing all these newer technologies that allow for more engaging and interactive web experience, if you’re still using IE6. A lot of developers are actually holding back on using these newer technologies, simply because IE6 doesn’t support them.

And then there’s the issue of security.

So you see, there’s a lot of reasons for IE6 to give way to newer browsers. Sure, it might have been the best web browser during its time, it may even have contributed a lot to the development of the web experience and internet. But we have to move on, make way for newer and better browsers to do their part. The sooner people move on from IE6, the better it is for us the web developers, for you the web users, and for the web and internet in general. Currently, there’s about 9.6% of the total internet users that are still using IE6. The number’s going down, that’s a surety, but it’s not going down fast enough. So please, change to newer browsers if you are still using IE6.